80 posts from January 2005

January 31, 2005

The Israeli Government has finally agreed to resettle the remaining 20,000 Falash Mura in Israel. 600 per month – double the current rate of immigration – will be brought to Israel until they are all resettled at the end of 2007.

What's been the hitch that has held up Falash Mura aliya?

Money.

The Jewish Agency estimates that it costs 100,000 to resettle each individual Falash Mura. (Presumably this is the average cost to the state over the lifetime of an individual.)

It seems that Sir Isaiah, Yehudi Menuhin and the 7th Lubavitcher rebbe were all equal Schneerson cousins and the rebbe's wife, Chaya Mushka (and daughter of the 6th rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn) used to travel to London to see Sir Isaiah's mother and attend the theater with her.

By the way, Sir Isaiah – an infrequent synagogue attendee – inherited from his mother the tefillin of the Alter Rebbe, Shneur Zalman of Liady the founder of the Chabad dynasty. It was not uncommon for Lubavitch hasidim to make a pilgrimage of sorts to Sit Isaiah's home just to catch a glimpse of them.

After two weeks of complete censorship, Aish HaTorah has returned a censored version of Dr. Gerald Schroeder's article, The Age of the Universe to the Aish.com website and made it an Editor's Pick in this week's Aish.com e-mail.

What prompted this 'change'?

Perhaps it was the reduced web traffic, disgust shown by (former) donors, and difficulty conducting Discovery Seminars when participants are aware of the Slifkin Ban and its repercussions.

Or, it could be a sudden fit of altruism.

You choose.

UPDATE: A reader has pointed out that significant changes have been made in Dr. Schroeder's article.

Searching the web, I found the original version. The new, censored version on Aish.com has this added paragraph inserted as the second paragraph:

Let me clarify right at the start. The world may be only some 6000 years old. God could have put the fossils in the ground and juggled the light arriving from distant galaxies to make the world appear to be billions of years old. There is absolutely no way to disprove this claim. God being infinite could have made the world that way. There is another possible approach that also agrees with the ancient commentators' description of God and nature. The world may be young and old simultaneously. In the following I consider this latter option.

In other words, Dr. Schroeder has been forced to add the theory of a 19th century Christian apologist, Philip Henry Gosse to his article without noting its Christian source or the fact that there are no classical Jewish sources that agree with Gosse.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a new Dark Age and R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv is our new black pope. May G-d save us.

January 28, 2005

Rabbi Berel Lazar, Chabad's 'Chief Rabbi' of Russia and Vladimir Putin's favorite Court Jew, has written a piece on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

What is most memorable about Rabbi Lazar's writing?

Like his patron Mr. Putin, Rabbi Lazar's commemoration of the
liberation of Auschwitz is memorable for what it is missing – any
mention of the 1,300,000 Jews murdered at Auschwitz.

Instead, Rabbi Lazar gives us an uncanny repetition of Mr. Putin's
speech, a repetition that stresses Mr. Putin's political agenda and his
fight against Chechen terror.

January 27, 2005

In the news today along with his brother-in-law and sister-in-law of AgriProcessors in Postville, Iowa for bundling campain contributions to Florida Republican Katherine Harris, Rabbi Milton Balkany – dubbed "Robbi" by the NY Post – has a rather checkered past:

And then it seems that Rabbi Balkany and his institution owed OHEL – an institution that serves mentally handicapped Jews – and it's director more than $100,000 in back rent and more than $50,000 in personal loans.

The second is a recap of the Federal indictment, including the threat to have an Orthodox aide to a sitting US Senator excommunicated after the aide wrote memos complaining about Balkany's heavy-handed efforts to compel Israeli government officials to use U.S. aid money to fund projects Balkany favored in Israel.

Toward the close of the ceremony and as darkness started to fall, the chief rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, presented Putin and the Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, each with a special medal. The rabbi praised Russia's role in liberating Auschwitz and liberating Europe from fascism and praised Poland for improving its ties with its small Jewish community and in hosting the ceremony.

In other words, the "state"-issued medal was given by Rabbi Lazar to its issuer – Mr. Putin.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav did not participate. In fact, as Ha'aretz reported, even though Rabbi Lazar claimed President Katsav would be awarding the medal, President Katsav did not even know about the medal until he arrived in Poland.

Another sick Chabad PR gambit, this time at the expense of the murdered, the survivors and those who paid with blood to liberate them.

The Russian News and Information Agency has commented on the letter signed by members of the Duma (parliment) and others accusing the Jews of fabricating antisemitism to divide and conquer Russia.

The main victim of this modern-day Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Why, Mr. Putin, of course. Why? Because it might disrupt arms sales to Syria:

But the main victim of that anti-Semitic action is not the Jews but
President Putin, even though he is invariably polite with the hierarchs
of the main faiths of Russia. The trouble is that he will have to
answer for the silly and crude escapade of 500 pseudo-patriots, which
is bound to have broad international repercussions.

As for the mental health of the authors of the anti-Semitic letter,
Rabbi Lazar is wrong: Though they are not very clever, they certainly
had a specific political goal in mind. The suit filed by the Black
Hundred was prompted by a desire to promptly drive a new wedge between
Russia and Israel, while the two countries are trying to smooth over
misunderstanding about Russian arms deliveries to Syria.

The only thing they disregarded is that Mr. Sharon and Mr. Putin will
come to an agreement, one way or another, while the Black Hundred and
Mr. Putin will never find a common language.

However, it is not quite clear where the medal comes from and who is bestowing it. At a news conference prior to the ceremony, Lazar said that he would present the medal together with Israeli President Moshe Katsav to express the gratitude of the entire Jewish people. But no one in Katsav's entourage knew anything about the medal when asked before their departure for Auschwitz.

Lazar's spokesperson, however, confirmed that the medal would be presented with Katsav, and said that it was a "state medal" without specifying which country coined it.

President Katsav's political advisor, Avi Granot, told Haaretz that upon arriving at Auschwitz they learned about the plan to present Putin with a medal, but "this fact cannot be presented as though the president is a partner to presenting the medal."

How much do you want to bet that medal is issued by the state of Russia?

His brother-in-law, Rabbi Milton Balkany, has been in the news for misappropriating almost one million dollars of Federal money meant for disabled students and for his habit of "bundling" campaign donations that has earned him the nickname "The Brooklyn Bundler."

Now it appears that the Rubashkin-Balkany clan has thrown their weight behind Florida politician Katherine Harris, who is of course famously close to Florida's governor Jeb Bush and the governor's brother, President George W. Bush.

What's curious is the timing of the donations.

It seems they were made just at the time the USDA was supposed to announce the findings of its investigation into AgriProcessors.

That investigation is now more than one month overdue, and the USDA has repeatedly refused requests to comment on its status.

January 26, 2005

800 years ago, the kind of witch hunt this ban has generated led
'Frummer Yidn' to invite the Holy Office of the Inquisition to burn the
writings of the heretic from Cairo. They did so in the center of
Montpellier. That act of fanatical mesira provided the legal precedent
for the burning of 24 cartloads of Talmudic Manuscripts in the Place de
l'Hotel de Vosges in Paris in the Spring of 1242.

There is, in Jerusalem and New York,
a group of highly sophisticated Ba'ale Teshuva who entered the Torah
World because they had been shown that one can be educated and Torah
observant as well. The vicious attacks on Rabbi Slifkin, which are
themselves heretical as they contradict the words of literally dozens
of Rishonim and later authorities, are creating an atmosphere which
will drive these wonderful people from Torah.…What do we have
to offer these fellow Orthodox Jews, when the Roshe Yeshiva they so
admire deny them their place in the World to come?

Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, a number of Soviet symbols - including the national anthem and an army flag - have been restored to use, reflecting widespread nostalgia for the communist era.

But the rehabilitation of Stalin - denounced by Soviet leaders after his death in 1953 for encouraging a cult of personality and killing millions of real and imagined opponents - had remained out of bounds. Statues of him were removed from Moscow in the 1960s.

Oleg Tolkachev, Moscow’s senator in the upper house of parliament, said a monument was to be erected to Stalin and others who led the war against Hitler. A statue will also be built in the Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border.

In another sign of Stalin’s growing appeal, many prime-time television shows have recently depicted him in a positive light.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will be decorated at Auschwitz with the Salvation medal as a symbol of gratitude to the Soviet people for the liberation of the notorious Nazi death camp, Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar said Monday at a press-conference.

Instead of honoring the true liberators – men now in their late 80's – who paid with blood for that liberation, Chabad has instead decided to turn the liberation of Auschwitz – and the Holocaust itself –into a sickening PR gambit.

Should not the day the Auschwitz death machine stopped be remembered? What about a holiday commemorating the end of WW2 – should we not show gratitude to G-d for the end of those horrible years and to the men who sacrificed so much to end them?

In an attempt to cut down on the number of fraudulent academic degrees used to scam Israel's socialized pay-scale system, the education ministry has decided to refuse recognition of any undergraduate degree issued by universities overseas universities that accept one year of yeshiva studies in Israel as university-level credits. In effect, this leaves all YU, Turo and many state college graduates without a valid BA. Worse yet, Masters and PhD-level degrees earned after graduating those universities are also not recognized, leading to the absurd situation of holders of valid PhD's being paid the same wage as high school graduates.

January 20, 2005

The Hebrew across the top of the flyer reads, "Yechi adonaynu moreynu v'rabaynu melekh hamoshiach leolam voed," "Long live our master, our guide, our rabbi the king messiah forever and ever." (Please click on the thumbnail to see the full-sized picture.)

If you want to understand why Rubashkin is (largely) getting a free pass from right-wing Orthodoxy, it is important to understand the right-wing Orthodox view on science.

Scientists and veterinarians have clearly stated that the animals shown on the PETA video suffered unnecessarily. Orthodox rabbis who have made statements on the Rubashkin-PETA issue have disagreed with them:

It's just like "a chicken running with its head cut off," said one prominent rabbi. Another repeatedly claims that the animals are just like a "drunk trying to stand" on wobbly legs, and we all know a drunk does not feel anything.

As several animal scientists have told me, the ignorance of simple biology needed to make these statements is overwhelming.

Here's a primer on science and right-wing Orthodoxy, courtesy of Da'as Hedyot.

As you read this post please remember that in rabbinic eyes, animals walking three minutes after shechita are insensate, do not feel and may very well already be dead.

Steven I. Weiss has written a piece for the Forward on the Slifkin book-banning. Strangely, he fails to mention the blogs – Chakira,House of Hock, and Hirhurim prominent among them – who broke this story and have done much of the reporting that SIW (the founder of the now-shuttered Protocols blog) heavily relies on for his report.

Meanwhile, Chabad Online has a piece in Hebrew and English about aletterwritten by allies of Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky deliniating the last 10 years of chaos in 770.

(Funny how these same people told the world just 6 months ago on the Rebbe's 10th yartzeit that all was calm and back to pre-1994 'normalcy'. I wonder if the New York Times, the Jewish Week and the Forward will take note of this apparent misrepresentation?

It's also interesting to note that this letter contains at least 2 signatures from rabbis who publicly declared after the Rebbe's passing that the Rebbe still is the messiah.)

By requiring audits of all plants – not just kosher plants – before meat can be sold to FMI-member grocery stores and National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR)-member fast food outlets.

The FMI audit requires standing shechita in an ASPC-pen. Only one kosher plant in America – AgriProcessors in Postville, Iowa – does upside-down shechita. All the others do standing ASPC-pen shechita.

Agudath Israel, Mr. Lubinsky, and kosher supervising agencies and representatives demanded almost one year ago to meet with FMI's president to change the FMI guidelines to allow upside-down shechita.

Agudath Israel's Rabbi Avi Shafran and Kosher Today's Menachem Lubinsky both allege that FMI refused to meet with their group and instead attempted to set up a meeting between two "consultants" working for FMI and the Agudah group. The Agudah-led group has so far refused that meeting.

Karen Brown, the senior vice president of FMI in charge of the Animal Welfare Audit Program told me last week that all special interest groups – religious, animal welfare or even growers – have been asked to meet with the consultants directly rather than with FMI staff.

Why?

Because FMI is a marketing group that represents retailers (like Albertson's and Safeway). The FMI staff are not scientists or experts in animal welfare. FMI believes that the criteria for auditng animal welfare should be decided first by the experts – the scientists. So, if the chicken growers have trouble with sections of the audit, they will be directed to FMI's consulting scientists, just as the rabbis were. This position has been made clear to all that have contacted FMI.

So, why are the rabbis refusing to meet with FMI's consultants? And why are they claiming "violation[s] of religious liberty"?

Outside of the requirement for standing shechita, it is difficult to see what in the FMI audit is a potential "violation of religious liberty."

Dr. Regenstein notes:

I repeat the key question that no one has provided me or Dr. Grandin with an answer to date: Is there any other technical issue besides the one big one: If an upside down pen that is properly operated and maintained were to be accepted (or at least allowed) by FMI/NCCR (and AMI), what other technical issues are there to be addressed?

If things are working well NOW at AgriProcessing -- then I believe that they could pass an audit with that one variance. And they are the only major glatt plant in the US (and Canada) that I am aware of that has that issue.

Yet, David Zwiebel, a vice president of Agudath Israel of America and a point-man on this issue is quoted by Kosher Today as asserting that:

[W]hile FMI had been put on notice that there are religious problems with
the audit document, it is highly inappropriate to be conducting any
audit of a kosher facility based on the FMI guidelines. Only after such
a meeting takes place, and all religious objections to the current
audit document have been properly accommodated, should audits be
permitted.

So why are the rabbis refusing to meet with scientists supportive of shechita?

Perhaps this is why:

The OU supervises Latin American kosher slaughter. That slaughter involves the shakling, hoisting and casting of live animals with slaughter performed on a slaughter table with slaughterhouse employees restraining the terrified animals using ropes and sometimes chains.

Kosher meat from this slaughter is imported to America and sold in restaurants, in frozen food products and canned products. The corned beef you bought at your local deli could very well have been produced from Latin American meat.

But it may not be only kosher meat from Latin American slaughter that is imported to America. A food industry source tells me that the non-kosher production from those slaughterhouses is also imported to America, and here may lie the problem.

For that meat to be sold to FMI or NCCR members, the plants – even if located in Latin America – would have to pass an audit. None of the OU plants in Uruguay could pass.

If the shechita process – from the initial restraint of the animal to its hanging post-shechita for processing – is exempted from FMI guidelines, all plants under the OU's supervision – including AgriProcessors in Postville – could pass audit with only minor adjustment.

Even the slaughter seen on PETA's videotape of AgriProcessors could pass.

It appears that the Torah.org search engine does not index features, although it indexes other parts of the site. (Nowhere on Torah.org is this made clear.)

I apologize for any misrepresentation or inconvenience my reporting error may have caused.

Rabbi Menken owns and manages Team Genesis, a webhosting and design firm that does the design and hosting for Torah.org. It should not be difficult for Torah.org to have this apparent technical glitch repaired so its readers can correctly search its site.

Torah.org has also banned all of Dr. Gerald (Genesis And The Big Bang) Schroeder's articles (except for one article they missed that mentions him) from its website, just as they have done with all of Rabbi Nosson Slifkin's work. (Please see the post immediately below this.)

January 16, 2005

Why were Rabbi Slifkin and his books banned by a large number of Haredi rabbinic leaders?

Rabbi Slifkin's 'crime' seems to be that he takes science seriously. The
'Gedolim' (great rabbinic leaders) involved in the ban do not and find it an affront to the
"Honor of the Torah" that any Orthodox Jew would and would publish a work stating so – hence the ban.

Two main questions swirl around this tragic case:

Did the 'Gedolim' agree to hear R. Slifkin or did they refuse?

Did a Beit Din (religious court) hear the case?

We may never know the truth about the first question, but the answer to the second is resoundingly clear – no Beit Din heard the case.

When you see the statements that got R. Slifkin banned, and you
see those very same statements were made by Gedolim of previous
generations – from R. Hirsch to R. Yitzhak mi Akko, from the Tiferet
Yisrael to the RAMBAN and RAMBAM – it is very difficult to argue that
the benefit of the doubt in this case should go solely (or even
partially) to the 'Gedolim' who issued the ban.

The facts seem to be uniformly on R. Slifkin's side.

Unfortunately, in today's version of Orthodox Judaism, the facts do not matter.

Rabbi Wolpe stated that one must even be willing to sacrifice one’s lifeto
avoid any involvement in removing Jews from their homes, stating that
taking part in such an act is considerably worse than eating pork on
the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement.

It appears that Rabbi Wolpe has added a new mitzvah to the Torah, an act that is forbidden under Jewish law and, by many opinions, is an act that renders one a heretic.

Although Rabbi Wolpe has previously made many controversial statements, he is still a member in good standing of Chabad and is often a speaker at Chabad events.

In response to the latest Haredi book-banning / excommunication Aish.com, the highly successful and widely read website of Aish HaTorah, has pulled a number of articles by various authors from its site for "review" by "today's leading [ultra-Orthodox] Torah scholars."

In the spirit of free inquiry, we print one of those now-banned articles in its entirety after the jump.

January 14, 2005

Many of you already know that Rabbi Nosson Slifkin's books have been banned by a list of rabbis that includes Dovid Feinstein and Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. Rabbi Slifkin's 'crime' seems to be his argument for the earth being more than 6,000 years old.

Haaretz has a truly sad article about the alienation of Ethiopian Jews from Israeli society and about the racism that fueled it:

"I thought that after doing army service I wouldn't have a problem getting into clubs, but that's where I came across the greatest racism of all. The worst humiliation I ever suffered was two years ago, when I went out with army buddies to the TLV club in Tel Aviv. They wouldn't let me in. My [white] Israeli friends were allowed in and I waited outside three hours. I swore never to go back there," he says.…

The hip-hop music is deafening. "[White] Israelis go to a
club to hear Middle Eastern music, with us its black music. Many may
not understand the words, but they identify with the message. They know
the songs are about racism and violence, and they feel that way," says
Kumra.

I tried during my 1993-95 stay in Israel to deal with this problem, which was then in its infancy. As a (then) Chabadnik, Chabad was the first place I turned. But Chabad was clear – it was not going to help Ethiopian Jews, period. My attempts were also rebuffed by other sectors of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world.

I am guilty of not looking outside of the haredi world for a solution to this sad problem.

Failed messiah was established and run in 2004 by Mr. Shmarya (Scott)Rosenberg. The site was acquired by Diversified Holdings, Feb 2016. .We thank Mr. Rosenberg for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish Community.

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